Crunch On Aol Extends To Refunds

Swamped Phone Lines Leave Customers Upset

America Online continued to be off-line for many of its dissatisfied customers on Friday, and those who used voice lines to call and complain found themselves on hold more often than not.

And in a bit of Information Age irony, the company urged many of its most upset customers to use old-fashioned U.S. Postal Service mail--called "snail mail" by many computer users--to collect a free month's on-line time to make up for their unhappiness.

The company also said things won't be getting any better on the refund front any time soon.

Robert Pittman, chief executive of AOL Networks, the division of Dulles, Va.-based America Online Inc. that runs the dial-up service, acknowledged that many people calling to ask a human operator for a refund get busy signals or find themselves waiting on hold.

A typical call to 1-800-827-6364, the customer service line handling refund requests under a deal announced Wednesday, takes about 30 minutes to complete once a caller gets through, Pittman said.

Pittman also said the firm can't fix this latest problem any time soon because it takes 10 days to train people to answer the calls, and all the available trained people are working "almost around the clock."

He added, "There is a huge focus on this in the media right now, and if people will just wait four or five days and then call, things will be much easier."

Customers like one Chicago-area man, who uses the screen name "HearSpot" on America Online, continued to express anger at the confusion that has followed the announcement of the refund agreement.

The refund program was announced Wednesday by AOL after three dozen state attorneys general, led by Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, had threatened legal action on behalf of their citizens. Since AOL began to offer a $19.95 flat-rate pricing schedule in December, thousands of users have been frustrated in their attempts to get on-line.

Customers who were unable to use the service for more than two hours in December and January will be eligible for a $19.95 refund for each month; those who used it between two and 15 hours can receive lesser refunds.

But now, AOL executives acknowledge, the embattled service is receiving new complaints about the steps it's taking to deal with old complaints.

HearSpot described making a call to the 800 number: "After many minutes of prompts (i.e. `if blah blah, press 2') I got to a recording that said that for billing questions and refunds I'd have to sign on to AOL and go to keyword:billing. . . .

"There's no way they're going to get this refund thing straight," HearSpot wrote. "My prediction: This whole AOL fiasco will get even worse before it gets better."

Pittman said that AOL knew it would have these new problems from the moment the company signed the refund agreement.

So after agreeing to all the demands to satisfy law enforcement officials, AOL chief executive Steve Case offered a free month's service for customers who are unhappy with AOL, even if they don't qualify for a refund. Those seeking a month's free service should write to:

AOL Member Refunds

P.O. Box 511

Ogden, Utah 84402-0511

This offer, Pittman said, is intended as a goodwill gesture to customers who kept calling and putting up with slow access over the past two months, piling up more than 15 hours and becoming ineligible for a cash refund.

He noted that during those two months, the average user of the service totaled 16 hours a month, which means that most of AOL's heaviest users would receive no satisfaction under the refund deal.

Meanwhile, he said, AOL has taken several small steps to increase capacity, including a software change that automatically logs a customer off after a relatively few minutes of inactivity.

America Online also changed the software to make its computers hang up much faster when a customer clicks to exit, he said.

"We're doing big things and small things alike to get our capacity up and meet the needs of our customers," Pittman said. "That is all we're thinking about here right now."